SHAPING OUR CONTEMPORARY INTERNATIONAL HELLSCAPE: The Biden-Harris Afghanistan Bugout 3 Years On

August 2024 marks the third anniversary of the Biden-Harris administration’s most consequential international policy action: the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal.

Why Biden-Harris? Vice President Kamala Harris has said on several occasions she was “in the room” — meaning in the decision loop — when Joe Biden ordered a withdrawal based on the calendar and not on battlefield conditions. “Completely out by 9/11” is a sound bite, a political bumper sticker. It isn’t clear-headed senior leader strategic guidance for a military withdrawal from a complex war zone.

Read the entire essay.

SPEAKING OF NATIONAL DEFENSE: Let’s Kick-start US Naval and Commercial Shipbuilding

U.S. MILITARY IN DECLINE: America’s Airpower Is at Risk

In July 2014, I wrote a column that included this troubling paragraph: “With a few teeth-clenching exceptions (the Korean War’s MiG Alley battles), since 1944, American land, sea and air forces have enjoyed the military and diplomatic benefits of U.S. air superiority. Unfortunately, in 2014 there are strong indications that America’s air advantage is diminishing.”

On July 29, 2024 (10 years later), Air & Space Forces Magazine online interviewed U.S. Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James C. Slife. This Ukraine war-informed quote struck home: “We used to make the claim that since 1953 no American has been killed by air attack. We can’t make that claim anymore,” Slife said. “It calls into question, ‘What does air superiority actually look like?’ [Does] it look like 30,000 feet over the Yalu River (Korea) in 1953 or does it look like below 3,000 feet with quadcopters with a hand grenade slung to the bottom of them? I think the answer is: It’s all of the above.”

Check it out.

FROM LAST WEEK: Biden’s ‘Different Picture’ Ploy Put Freedom at Risk Did it ever. The direct quote from Joe that describes the entire Biden Administration: “And there’s a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”

HOMELAND DEFENSE FOULUP: Secret Service Misses the Assassin in Plain Sight

“See something, say something.” After the 9/11 disaster, that phrase served as a terse marching order for alert American citizens willing to help stop terror attacks on U.S. soil.

“See something, say something” is superb national security advice. 9/11 demonstrated America is under attack. Every citizen can contribute to the defense effort.

On Saturday, July 13, several alert citizens attending a presidential campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, saw a young man lurking near a building adjacent to the fairground where presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump intended to deliver a speech. The young man was later seen on the building’s roof.

Local and Global Security Point 1: Per 9/11, concerned citizens on the ground provided The See. Several informed law enforcement officers. Hence Point 2: Citizens provided The Say.

Bottom Line: “Mayorkas and Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle failed to execute fundamental duties. They should resign immediately.”

But read the entire commentary.

SO NOW THE HATERS TRY TO KILL PRESIDENT TRUMP: Remember June 2017? A Bernie Bro launched a terror attack, trying to kill congressional Republicans en masse. James T. Hodgkinson. Don’t hear much about him. We should. I wrote this for The Spectator: The Left-Wing Terrorist’s Capitol Hill Coup d’Etat

UPDATE: I just saw Glenn’s recollection. James T. Hodgkinson won’t be erased.

STRAIGHT, NO CHASER: A Trump NATO? The 3% Solution

If you want peace, prepare for war. The maxim is attributed to Scipio Africanus, the Roman general who defeated Hannibal — but Plato mulled the idea.

If they want peace, for the next 10 years NATO nations and their Pacific allies must spend 3% of GDP on defense. Current U.S. defense spending? About 3%.

I wrote this essay Tuesday. As for Biden’s press conference this evening, he lied about his strong support for Ukraine. Recall Biden thought Russia would blitz Ukraine and he wanted Zelenskyy to flee. Zelenskyy replied to the effect, “I need ammunition, ‘not a ride.” Will the mainstream media call him on his lie?

THE BIDEN MOMENT: Biden Administration policy failure, The Propaganda Press and American disintegration.

The June 27 televised Biden-Trump debate fully exposed America’s and the Free World’s most grave strategic weakness: dominant mass media organizations that fail to hold their favored government, economic and media elites accountable for policy failures.

Strategic weakness — that’s a Washington wonk way of saying “a social, political or military flaw a dedicated enemy of America identifies and then exploits over time” with the goal of weakening or destroying the U.S.

MORE:

A dysfunctional president of the United States is a high order defense problem in a world of nuclear weapons, ICBMs, wealthy enemy states (China) and suicidal terrorists.

MORE:

The Biden Moment of one policy failure after another has been a disaster for U.S. defense.

MORE: America’s “most insidious threat is China’s “disintegrative warfare.” In a disintegrative war, a “unitary belligerent becomes increasingly fragmented by secessions.”

Is Biden’s America increasingly fragmented? Read the whole column.

HEH: Or hah. Biden’s lies begin with Afghanistan. Really. Media perception? BS. Even Reuters nails his Delaware fraud bottom.

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE LIVE ON CNN: Biden’s border catastrophe has made our backyards battlefields.

I WISH I WERE DRUNK BLOGGING*: First five minutes of first quarter of the…debate: Biden word fumbles, and word fumbles — a babbling wreck. Or has CNN allowed a cheap fake?

*looking for a good pinot noir…

NATIONAL SECURITY IS THE DECISIVE QUESTION IN EVERY PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE…Or It Should Be: No Debate: Biden’s Damaged US Security, International, Domestic and Economic

After 3 1/2 years of economic, military, diplomatic and social policy mayhem, the facts speak: Joe Biden, his handlers and their feckless media apparatchiks have severely damaged America’s physical security, both international and domestic. It will take years to fix the harm of Bidenomics — and the economic wreckage makes addressing the international (e.g., military) and domestic (e.g., police) security issues more difficult.

Biden’s Afghanistan bugout encouraged our enemies:

We now know Biden knew early on his bungled withdrawal had become a catastrophe. On Aug. 31, 2021, Reuters published the transcript of a July 23 telephone exchange between Biden and Afghanistan’s then-President Ashraf Ghani. Biden told Ghani that “… the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things aren’t going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban. And there’s a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.“

Sheesh. “Whether true or not.” The Reuters report is decisive evidence — of Biden lying to the American people and our allies.

“…Which brings us to the porous U.S. border — which turns our backyards into battlefields.”

CNN debate moderators — take note.

My latest Creators Syndicate column.

THE 8 NABBED TAJIKS ON THE TERROR LIST: Biden’s CBP App Lunacy Fuels War on American Civil Society. Yup. One of the eight nabbed terror suspects used Biden’s app to request asylum. Could be that’s how he was caught, but he never should have entered the U.S. The app gave one potential terrorist “entry privilege.” My term.

For Americans concerned about the security of their communities and nation, the breaking news on terrorist infiltration is terrifying — and ought to guide future defense policy.

On June 11, the federal government announced Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested eight illegal aliens from Tajikistan. Tajikistan is a predominantly Muslim Asian state bordering Afghanistan and a former Soviet Socialist Republic.

The feds believe the Tajik men have ties to the Islamist terrorist group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. ISIS has a presence in Afghanistan and probably a base.

ICE arrested the suspects in three urban areas: New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. According to two media reports, the men entered the U.S. via the U.S.-Mexico border. L.A. is near Mexico. Philly and New York? No.

Check out the column.

FLOATING TARGET OFF GAZA: Pier Pressure On Gaza’s Shore — And In Michigan

SUMMARY: The Biden administration wants to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza to save the lives of Palestinian civilians. The Biden administration wants to use a complicated military structure/system called JLOTS — acronym for Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore — to pull it off. JLOTS is a floating, temporary pier for bringing supplies from big ships to a port-less shore. Suffering Gazans could be succored by land through Egypt. Gazans could be supplied through Israel. But Hamas stands in the way. So why the pier posturing? The floating piers are campaign photo-ops for Michigan Muslim voters.

Read the entire column.

VERY RELATED: The pier has deployed “amid security concerns.”

THREE INVASIONS ON THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S WATCH: They approach near-simultaneous crises.

Three invasions with extraordinary global impact and history-shaping consequences have occurred since January 2021 — the month Joe Biden became America’s president and his administration began directing U.S. foreign and federal domestic policy.

The invasions in reverse chronological order:

1. Hamas’ October 2023 genocidal invasion of Israel. Hamas is committed to Israel’s elimination, which means committing genocide.

2. Vladimir Putin-led Russia’s February 2022 all-out conventional attack to seize Ukraine.

3. The illegal alien disruption and “political transformation” invasion that began in spring 2021 after Biden, by presidential directive, effectively ended U.S. border controls.

My latest Creators Syndicate essay.

VERY RELATED: Communist China’s TikTok War To Disintegrate America

TIME FOR ACTION: Time To Punish Iran’s Ayatollah Regime For Its War On The World

Since the 1990s, Iran’s Khomeinist regime has waged a global Aryan nationalist holy war.

Iran is Aryanistan. Land of the Aryans. Check it out. The Iran Aryans despise Semites; Arabs and Jews are Semites. Ishmael, Arab progenitor, was a son of Abraham. That’s one deep reason Donald Trump’s Abraham Accords had traction.

Khomeinist refers to followers of Khomeinism, the violent ideology of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who toppled the Shah in 1979. Khomeini was a bitter old man who liked to write love-laced pleasure-enthused Persian poetry when he wasn’t despising Western civilization.

Failed artist turning to revolution — that’s a deadly history. Karl Marx was a failed German poet. Marx wanted to be Novalis (a brilliant German Romantic poet and polymath — check him out). Adolf Hitler (a self-proclaimed Aryan Fuhrer) was a failed painter. I’m told Khomeini’s poems are ersatz Omar Khayyam but at times show signs of merit.

More:

At some point, the Iranian regime itself must suffer a heavy and deadly military blow.

One option: a “simultaneous strategic bombing strike” (SSBS, first described by StrategyPage.com in 2003). In a short time frame, aircraft, cruise missiles, drones and perhaps ballistic missiles with conventional warheads deliver hundreds of precision weapons, hitting regime nuclear targets, Iranian Al-Quds special forces and Revolutionary Guard command and control facilities, air defense sites, ballistic missile sites and intelligence agency facilities.

Of course, the President must give the order…

RELATED: Houthi Smack Down. (Podcast)

STRATEGYPAGE: Jim Dunnigan’s Annual Wars Update.

January 1, 2024: This is our annual summary of current war zones and an overview of where it is all heading. After this overview there is the alphabetical list of the war zones and a quick summary of how the local mayhem has been proceeding. Since we have been covering this sort of thing for over twenty years now, there are many war zones that have gone quiet. We left most of those in summary, with a note that those wars had gone dormant, and maybe extinct. History shows that dormant is more common than extinct. Forever wars, or at least multi-century ones, are an ancient tradition.

The update is long — but it is diverse and inclusive.

IT COULD BE A VERY LONG YEAR: Six Strategic Challenges For 2024

…Challenge No. 6: America’s Southern Front. In 2023, “flailing states” (states immersed in anarchic violence that spills over political borders or states unable to control their own borders) were challenge No. 2. America’s southern border crisis has created a hybrid war front –California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas are a hybrid-war front line.

In fiscal year 2023, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol apprehended 736 known or suspected terrorists (KSTs) on terror watch lists along the southern and northern U.S. borders. Fact: there were 1.7 million illegal alien gotaways. If two or three out of a 1,000 gotaways are KSTs, that’s 3,000 to 5,000 violent enemies infiltrating America’s home front.

Mass terror attack on the home front? To stop it takes aggressive deterrence — by smart and courageous leaders.

My latest Creators Syndicate column. Check out the other five.

SOUTHERN FRONT: ‘Projecting A Different Picture’ Won’t Solve Biden’s Border Crisis

The quote in the title receives little media and political attention. It should, for it provides a strategic insight into the Biden administration’s worst policy disasters, foreign and domestic.

I call it the Biden administration’s Afghanistan Narrative Warfare Ploy, an attempt to deceive the American people and the world, with Biden-friendly media a complicit ally in the deception.

Now the Biden administration is attempting to hide its responsibility for its policy disaster on the U.S.-Mexico border and the subsequent illegal migrant crisis.

My latest Creators Syndicate column.

THOUGHTS ON THE LATEST REPUBLICAN DEBATE: After Last Night. Powerline’s Scott Johnson’s on the scene report and assessments. His daughter Eliana Johnson, Editor-in-Chief of Washington Free Beacon, was one of the debate moderators.

A SOUTH AMERICAN DISRUPTION FRONT: Oil War in South America: Venezuela’s Maduro Threatens Guyana

I wrote this Creators SYndicate column Tuesday afternoon. Since then Maduro has mobilized military forces. In retrospect I should have elaborated on the third sentence in this paragraph:

Britain still supports Guyana. Yes, Britain and NATO are focused on supporting Ukraine. Yes, Chavistas have made verbal common cause with fellow oil producer ayatollah Iran — a rhetorical proxy. Yes, the Biden administration is reprehensibly slow to react to crises — and a reptile like Maduro may see an opportunity.

Maduro is acting as an Iranian proxy of a type — a turmoil proxy. There are also Falklands War echoes.

Various Venezuelan governments have claimed Guyana’s Essequibo region, but Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez, got serious about it. In 2010 Chavez was threatening to invade Curacao as well as supporting Colombian rebels. He actually toyed with invading Curacao in 2007. This column from 2018 discusses Chavez’ “Bolivarian state” and the the jaw-dropping exodus of Venezuelan refugees fleeing the Chavistas’ hell.

VERY RELATED: This popped up on a news feed. Venezuela-Guyana tensions soar, US mounts military exercises According to the wire service, the exercises are “joint military flight drills” over Guyana. This report emphasizes Brazil’s tough political response and military deployment.

Israel’s Yemen Front: Iran’s Houthi Proxies Wage War at Sea and in Space

For Iran, Yemen’s instability provides a type of plausible deniability. The ayatollah regime can blame its terror attacks, assassinations, raids on shipping, and missile and drone strikes on indigenous Yemeni insurgents, primarily the Houthis — a Shia group from northwestern Yemen that controls the capital, Sana, and the major port city, Hodeida.

My latest Creators Syndicate column.

B-21 RAIDER BOMBER TAKES OFF: Congratulations to the USAF on the plane’s successful first test flight — yesterday, November 10. But as the Reuters report says, the first test flight was supposed to take place in December 2021. Here’s a close up: the unveiling photo from December 2022.

STRATEGYPAGE DESERVES SOME CLICKS: Time To Strike Ayatollah Iran? Of course it’s time — high time. Long overdue. Should have hit the murderous creeps hard in 1979. But — Jimmy Carter. Then Obama-Biden. Glenn went with the Creators Syndicate link since it went on the web around 1500 hours Eastern Standard.

POWERLINE PODCAST: America Confronts Multi-Front Proxy Wars Steve Hayward and I discuss the current hellscape.

APRES INSTA OPEN THREAD AIN’T ELITIST APRES SKI: Turkey’s Erdogan Applauds Hamas’ Terror: Is Erdo’s ‘Middle Man’ Sham Kaput?

Extract:

March 2022 — Good Face: Erdo claims he’s the go-between for Ukraine and Russia. Oct. 19, 2023 — Bad Bad Face: Erdo ally and notorious antisemite Muhammed Ali Fatih Erbakan calls for the closure of NATO military bases in Turkey. Erbakan specifies the Incirlik Air Base and the Kurecik Radar facility. Reality Question: Is Iran paying Erbakan or is Russia?

Oct. 23 — Happy Face: Erdo sends Turkey’s parliament a bill approving Sweden’s NATO membership.

Oct. 25 — NATO Bad Face but for Islamists a Happy Face: Erdo tells his party faithful: “Hamas is not a terrorist organization, it is a liberation group, ‘mujahideen’ waging a battle to protect its lands and people.”

Oct. 26 Counter-Terror Honest Face: Turkish aircraft and drones on attack Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) positions in northern Iraq. Turkey and Erdo, for good reason, call the PKK terrorists. Turkey claims the strikes killed 10 PKK terrorists. Justification: the PKK’s suicide bomber October 1 attacks in Ankara.

Justified retaliation? Yes. Yet. Hamas propagandists and NATO knee-jerks condemned Israel for justified retaliation against Hamas’ Oct. 7 baby-beheading atrocities.

Check it out.

USMC ROBOT GOAT: It’s a combat robot goat. The four-legged robot in the photo is carrying an M72 Light Anti-Tank Weapon (LAW). In 2014 Israel ordered 25,000 LAWs. As the 2014 update notes, the LAW is “often used against enemy troops inside bunkers and buildings.” It packs a punch and is light enough to be carried by…an infantryman or a robot goat.